Chapter 18
18
Zach had no idea what to expect as Maggie fidgeted and fiddled with her hair while Ben cleaned up the game and he simply waited, wondering what she wanted. Wondering also what he wanted, because ever since that talk with Jenna—and then Maggie had come blazing in with her assumptions and accusations—he’d realized he really hadn’t known. He’d thought he’d known what he wanted out of life for years, but those two conversations had scattered all his certainties. It wasn’t a nice feeling.
Nearly two weeks later, he was still reeling from the revelations, as well as the hurt. Maggie might have thumbed a quick text to assuage her conscience—and probably more for Ben’s sake than his—but he was getting pretty tired of rolling over every time someone made an assumption about him. Jenna had shown him he needed to change. So, without realizing it, had Maggie.
“Let me help clean up,” he told her, and she began a fumbling protest before she fell silent and then nodded.
“Thanks. That would be great.” She turned to the kitchen and Zach followed her.
Ben had remained by the big sofa as he continued to put away all the elaborate pieces of RainQuest, while Lynn mumbled something about needing to check on something upstairs, and scurried away. Clearly she was trying to give them some privacy, and Zach wondered what Maggie had told her.
In the kitchen area he started loading cups into the industrial dishwasher.
“Another beast,” Maggie joked with a nod to the big silver machine. “It scares me just as much as the espresso machine.”
“It’s just an appliance,” Zach replied, and he saw Maggie wilt. If she’d been hoping for a bit of banter, he already knew he didn’t have it in him. Not now.
Silently she started collecting cups from the countertops and handing them to him to load. They worked for several minutes in a silence that felt thick with tension. Zach had no intention of breaking it. Maggie had been the one who had said she wanted to talk, so she could talk.
“Look…” she began, just as Zach switched on the industrial dishwasher and the kitchen was filled with the noise of its mechanized roar. Maggie winced, and Zach gave an apologetic grimace. He hadn’t meant to cut her off; it had just happened that way.
“Sorry,” he said gruffly once the dishwasher had finished.
“It’s okay.” She cleared her throat. “All I really wanted to say was I’m sorry for what I said before, you know, back at the general store, about the whole meme thing. I shouldn’t have rushed in with my assumptions the way I did.” She swallowed, clearly forcing herself to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
She waited for his reply, and in truth Zach struggled to think of how to respond. How did he even feel? As far as apologies went, it had been decent enough, if a bit stilted. He didn’t doubt she meant it, and yet it still felt like so little.
“Thanks,” he finally said. “I appreciate that.”
“Um, okay.” Maggie looked disconcerted by his reply, or maybe by his lack of enthusiasm. “Well… I hope you’re not still angry. I mean, I understand why you would have been before, but…” She trailed off, clearly longing for him to fill in the blanks the way he once would have. He would have jumped to make things easier for her. Smooth out all the bumps, make a wry little joke to pave the way a little more.
Trouble was, he just didn’t feel like it anymore. Not with Maggie, and not with anybody in Starr’s Fall. He was tired of trying to prove himself to this town. To anyone.
“I’m not angry,” he told her. He’d been hurt , but he was getting over it.
“You don’t sound like you’re not angry,” she replied unhappily. “Zach, I really am sorry…”
“I know.”
She gazed up at him, her dark eyes full of misery and confusion. Zach felt a stirring of sympathy, and for a second he wanted to do nothing more than take her into his arms, kiss her the way he had before, and forget all this stupid drama. It wasn’t who he was . At least, it wasn’t who he had been.
But he was changing, whether he wanted to or not, and truth be told, he suspected that this kind of change had been a long time coming and was a good thing. But he was sorry for Maggie’s sake, as well as his own. Whatever relationship they might have had felt like a what-could-have-been moment that had most definitely passed.
“Hey, I’ve finished cleaning up.” Ben came into the kitchen, and then faltered. “Um…” He glanced between Zach and his mom, clearly taken aback by the unhappy silence that seemed as if it weighted the very air. “Who died?” he joked, his voice wobbling.
Maggie let out a huff of tired laughter. “Sorry, I’m just exhausted from the day.” She turned to Zach, managing to look directly at him without meeting his eye, which took some skill. “Thanks so much for helping out, Zach.” She could have been talking to any Joe Schmoe of Starr’s Fall, a fact which irritated him even though Zach knew he’d been treating her the same way.
“Zach, why don’t you stay for pizza?” Ben suggested eagerly. “My mom promised takeout tonight because she said she’d definitely be too tired to cook.”
Ben sounded so hopeful that Zach hated to turn him down, but he was about to, for Maggie’s sake, when she chimed in, “Yes, you should stay.” She sounded wooden, but she wouldn’t have said it unless she meant it, and maybe they did have more to say to each other.
“Okay,” Zach said, and smiled at Ben. “But I’m not trying pineapple and black olive pizza.”
“Come on,” Ben laughed back, “you totally should. I bet you’ll love it.”
Zach kept up the banter with Ben as Maggie turned off the lights and they all headed upstairs. He had a feeling this evening was going to be painfully awkward, and also might tempt him to change his mind about Maggie, but he was determined to stay his course.
He wasn’t going to be the stooge of Starr’s Fall any longer, accepting everyone’s insults with a smile, taking everything on the chin like none of it hurt. And he wasn’t going to be the pathetic loser who was still sleeping in his childhood bedroom, taking orders from his big sister like he didn’t have any ideas of his own.
No, what Jenna and Maggie had said to him had been a huge wake-up call. Zach Miller was going to be different… starting now.
* * *
As she came up the stairs, Lynn gave her a narrow-eyed look and Maggie just shook her head in response. She wasn’t about to explain to her sister, in looks or whispers, what had happened between her and Zach… and in truth, nothing had. She’d apologized and he’d accepted her apology. End of a very brief, sad story.
She busied herself calling in their pizza order while Ben, Zach, and Lynn all deconstructed the details of the day. Ben was bubbling over with ideas—a chess tournament, rankings for various games kept on a scoreboard, a toddler hour with early-childhood games, bridge and Scrabble nights.
“Wait, do you play bridge?” Zach had asked with a laugh, and Ben had grinned, ducking his head.
“No, but I bet some people in Starr’s Fall do.”
“Henrietta Starr probably does,” Zach agreed. “Her family founded the town and she’s about ninety years old now. Laurie’s friends with her. You might have seen her around.”
“Yes, she came into Max’s Place when I was there.” Maggie recalled the elderly woman’s acerbic dignity with a small smile. “She’s quite the personality.”
“She’s got a tongue on her, that’s for sure. She’ll tell you what she really thinks.” Zach turned to Ben. “You have the heart of a gamer and the mind of a businessman,” he proclaimed. “Great combo, Ben.”
“I think I’ll go get the pizza,” Maggie announced. “Too bad Slice of Heaven doesn’t offer delivery service yet. Or that there aren’t any other takeout places in Starr’s Fall.”
“And Slice of Heaven probably never will offer delivery,” Zach told her, his eyes glinting in a way that still made her stomach flip. “Jake, who runs the place, got his license suspended after too many speeding tickets so it’s pickup only for the foreseeable future.”
“Oh, dear.” Maggie felt her mouth tip up at the corners, but she still felt—and probably looked—miserable. She wished Zach hadn’t agreed to stay, especially if it had been out of some kind of pity, for either her or Ben.
“Why don’t I come with you to collect the pizza?” Zach suggested. He was already rising from the sofa and reaching for his coat.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Lynn said in brisk agreement, with a stern look at Ben, who was clearly wondering why it took two people to get a couple of pizzas.
“Fine,” Maggie replied, unable to summon a friendlier response. She felt too raw and fragile, which was alarming, because they’d barely spoken… but she supposed that was why she did.
They went back downstairs and out to her car in silence and had driven all the way down Main Street before Maggie finally worked up the courage to say something.
“So I guess this whole thing has kind of tanked anything more between us,” she stated with an unaccustomed boldness that felt both reckless and welcome. She’d rather know, she decided, than keep skirting around what was becoming painfully obvious.
Zach stared straight ahead of him, his hands loosely clasped in his lap. “It depends on what you define as ‘this whole thing,’ I guess,” he replied in a voice that was far too neutral.
“Well… me getting mad at you. And,” she added, forcing herself to say it all, “jumping to conclusions about what you’d said to Ben?—”
“It wasn’t that,” Zach interjected quietly, and there was a sorrow and a hurt in his voice that made Maggie wilt inside.
“What was it, then?” she made herself ask. “Because clearly something has changed, Zach. I mean… I know it was just one kiss, but it meant something to me.”
“It meant something to me, too,” he replied in the same even tone.
“Okay…” She wasn’t sure where to go from there. What more could she say? “So what changed?”
Zach was silent for a long moment. Maggie waited, her hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, her stomach swirling with dread as the silence stretched on. What on earth was he going to say?
“Look, I know this is a cliché,” he finally said, still staring straight ahead, “but it’s not you, it’s me. At least, it’s mostly me. It’s a little bit you, too, I think, even if you don’t see it.”
“What—”
He held up a hand. “Let me finish.”
“Okay.”
“As you know, I’ve dated a lot. And as you also know, this town sees me as some kind of player, who goes on dates and then dumps the women afterwards, like I’m just sowing my wild oats or whatever. But that’s never how it’s been. At least, mostly. Mostly, I’m the one who is dumped, because I go in too serious, I create all these expectations, looking for Miss Perfect, and she doesn’t exist. Everyone ends up disappointed.” He sighed and leaned his head back against the car seat. “That year staying at home with my parents when my mom had cancer really changed me. I didn’t want to party and fool around and have fun anymore. I just wanted what they had—a stable marriage, a togetherness, and a purpose that they worked at together . At least, that’s what I told myself. But my sister said something to me recently—right before you stormed into the barn, actually—and it made me realize how messed up it’s all been for me. How I’ve become such a people pleaser, without even realizing it, because of the way my parents were—not with each other, but with me and Jenna.”
They’d pulled into the darkened parking lot of Slice of Heaven, and Maggie parked the car and waited for more. Zach finally turned to face her, his face half-hidden in shadow although Maggie could still see how grimly resolute he was.
“I won’t go into all the details about my childhood and all that kind of crap,” he told her with an attempt at wryness, “but I’ve come to realize it was kind of unhealthy. And after you came into the barn and said all that stuff, I took a long, hard look at our relationship. I know we didn’t really have one, but even in just our friendship, I realized I was the one doing all the heavy lifting.” He held up a hand to stem any protestations she might have made, although in truth Maggie was reeling so much from what he’d said so far that she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” he told her. “I’m accusing myself. I should have stopped trying so hard a long time ago.”
The bitterness in his voice surprised and alarmed her; she’d never heard him speak this way. It wasn’t who he was . “Zach… there’s nothing wrong with trying,” she ventured cautiously. “Or being a nice person?—”
“There is when it’s solely to make people like you.” Now he sounded as if he were full of self-loathing. “And frankly I think I’ve been in that mode for way too long.”
She sat back, trying to digest everything he’d said. “When you said you’d done all the heavy lifting…” she began, and Zach gave a twitchy shrug.
“I’m not saying you should have done more, Maggie. Let’s be honest, we didn’t know each other that well, and I recognize that you and Ben have gone through a hard time, harder than I even realized, and so you were in a different kind of place. It’s just… when you came into the barn and threw everything at me that everyone in this stupid town has insisted on believing for years, and you didn’t even ask me, just bought into all the assumptions, even knowing how I felt about it all, because I’d told you…” His voice cracked, and Maggie had to close her eyes. When he put it like that, it made her realize, so wretchedly, how much she must have hurt him.
“I really am sorry,” she whispered as she felt the hot press of tears against her closed lids. “So sorry, Zach.”
“I know. And I am, too.” Zach drew a quick, steadying breath. “But I’m done with proving myself to anyone anymore—to you, to my sister, to all of Starr’s Fall. That’s not who I want to be now.”
“Zach…” Maggie knew she needed to be as honest as he had been, even though it felt like sticking pins in her eyes, every single word sharp and painful. “I threw all those accusations at you as an excuse,” she told him, her voice wobbling all over the place. “I was scared. Scared of being in a relationship, of being vulnerable, of feeling so much…” She stumbled over the words, longing for him to understand. “Just scared in general. I didn’t mean any of what I said to you, I promise. It was just the fear talking.”
“I understand that.” For a second, as he looked at her, Maggie felt the wild lurch of hope that maybe it was going to be all right. His lips curved into a small smile, and he even leaned forward a little, and she did too, almost as if they might kiss. She wanted to, felt that desire flooding her senses, making her yearn, and she thought Zach did, too…
Then he sighed and sat back. “But I’m not sure it really matters at this point, Maggie. I’m sorry, but…” He shook his head. “I just can’t. Not now. Not till I figure out who I am, what I’m doing with my life.”
Maggie nodded her understanding, even though she felt cut to the heart. She’d just bared her soul, and he’d said it was a moot point. “Like I said,” he continued resignedly, “it’s more me than you.” He paused before adding, “Although I will say you should have told me how vulnerable Ben was, considering how much time I was spending with him—for his sake, not mine. If I’d known he’d been hospitalized for a suicide attempt… well, that’s something I would have taken very seriously.” He gave her a meaningful look that made her feel about two inches tall.
“I know I should have,” she whispered. “ Zach …” Her voice broke, and he reached out and tucked that single white streak of hair behind her ear.
“I still think you’re amazing,” he told her in a husky voice. “And gorgeous. And sexy.” Maggie had to close her eyes to keep a tear from slipping down her cheek. She wasn’t going to beg, but oh, she wanted to. Zach leaned forward and brushed a kiss across her cheek, his lips soft and cool as she inhaled the woodsy scent of him, and it made her ache all the more.
Then he leaned back and opened the car door. “Come on. The pizza will be cold.”
Maggie didn’t think she could have felt any more miserable as she followed him into Slice of Heaven. She could have dealt with his anger, she thought, or even his hurt; she could have survived a painfully honest conversation, if only it had led somewhere. But this felt like the dead end of all dead ends; there was no way forward, not just because of her, but because of him.
They’d only kissed twice, but it had felt like the beginning of everything. And it was only now that it was all over before it had really started that she realized not just how much she missed it, but how much she needed him. Zach Miller had been the best thing about her life in Starr’s Fall, and she’d gone and completely ruined any chance they might have had together.